I just want to say thank you to everyone for their interest in my small contribution to this discussion about Dancing with the Stars. It will be interesting to see the impact that these discussion on and off air will have on the show.

I want to make one thing clear. It wasn’t the low scores I was most concerned with. It was the combination of factors, and how they combined.

The comments generally made to Gerrard have shown a nervousness that some awareness training would have assisted as some of my commenters have noted. Not to necessarily have softened the feedback, but to make the judges and the hosts more confident and therefore relaxed around the topic. Perfect time to do that was whey asked him on to the show.

Another major point is that he is making an effort to take the feedback that he is given on board and therefore give more feedback and judge accordingly. None of these celebrities are aiming to be professional dancers but to entertain, as is the judges role:

McKenney ….  said it was his duty to judge as he did and to “entertain the audience”.

My major critiscm however seems to have been largely missed and goes beyond the last show.. It is this. There is no need to remind the audience at the start of every show that he has an obvious disability. We know that. We get it. With one in 5 people in Australia estimated to be living with some form of disability and more recent figures indicated that the roughly the same percentage have a mental illness, the chances are good that Gerrard is not the only one on that stage and certainly not in the audience. The treatment he has recieved from the start has made me cringe every time and I am not the only one. The last thing needed is further embarrassment for the individuals or the broader community.

With those percentages set to increase, perhaps we need to move away from singling people out and focus on true intergration and dare I say; inclusion?

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